Megaman 2 for Gameboy

Illustration by Pat Henzy

The original Megaman for Gameboy is one of the perfect games on the Gameboy. The graphics were clean, the sound was perfect, the music was what you would expect from a Megaman game and most importantly the game was challenging. In my opinion Megaman for Gameboy was a much more difficult game than the N.E.S. version. Megaman 2 for Gameboy was way less of a challenge, I was able to sit down yesterday and beat the game. I took breaks in between but total time to complete the game I would say was under 3 hours. When I finally beat the original Megaman for Gameboy I had struggled with it for at least a month or two.

Despite the fact that the challenge of the previous Megaman game is completely thrown out the window I still really enjoyed this game. The music was not quite as god as in the first game but it was still fun and was still Megaman through and through. Each level starts out as a replication of it’s N.E.S. counterpart but then about halfway through the stage the game changes things up. The slide move from Megaman 3(N.E.S.) returns in this game as does Rush, you’re faithful robot canine. He is able to transform to assist you with jumping large walls, into a jet board and into a submarine. The game is fun, but like I said earlier the challenge is much diluted from the previous game.

To further explain how the difficulty is made easier the level layout in this game is changed extremely. In this game you face off against 4 robot masters from Megaman 2(N.E.S.), after they are defeated you travel to Dr.Wiley’s skull castle where you face off against 4 robot masters from Megaman 3(N.E.S.). For each of the robot masters in Dr.Wiley’s castle that you defeat you receive a password(this is changed from every other Megaman game in which you had to get through Dr. Wiley’s castle in one run through). Next up is a fight against a robot master named Quint(I will talk more about him later). After that task is completed you play one Dr. Wiley stage which is very easy compared to his stages in other Megaman games, at the end of the stage is Dr. Wiley. Dr. Wiley has 3 forms. I defeated Dr.Wiley on my first try using only the Mega Buster weapon. The bosses that you face in this game are Metal Man, Clash Man(who was named Crash Man on the N.E.S.), Wood Man, Air Man, Magnet Man, Needle Man, Top Man and Hard Man.

The robot Quint is very odd, the story I found out by searching multiple sites on-line about him says that he is Megaman from the future. Dr. Wiley upgrades him and has him fight on his side. He looks like Megaman except for the fact that he has a V shaped logo on his forehead and he wears sunglasses. Speaking of sunglasses I was a little upset that Protoman never makes an appearance, but maybe he does in the next Gameboy title. Quint rides on a pogo stick and is very easy to defeat.

I enjoyed the game on it’s own for what it was, and would recommend the game to Megman fans. There are some cool things in this game and it is fun to see the old levels from the N.E.S. games changed up a bit. If you are a gamer that enjoys Megaman solely for the difficulty of the games I would say pass up on this game though.